The practice of selecting lipstick products on the basis of application of the lipstick product on the lips of the customer is currently in disfavor due to its unsanitary nature and its potential for transmitting disease from customer to customer. However, selection of the lipstick product on the basis of solely viewing the color thereof is not reliable principally due to the differences between the basic lip color of different people and the different colors produced when the lipstick is applied to the different color lips. The reason for this is that lipstick is not opaque but has a measure of transparency and the ultimate appearance of the lipstick is a function both of the color of the lipstick and of the lips of the user.
A further problem arising in lipstick selection is the absence of uniformity of the ambient lighting and accordingly a difference in perceived color of the lipstick product under different lighting conditions.
In order to aid in the selection of lipstick color by a user, U.S. Pat. No. 1,979,119 discloses a hand held mirror having a lip shaped aperture in the mirror and a movable member behind the mirror carrying colored areas adjusted to be selectively brought into registration with the aperture and thus place a colored representation of a pair of lips on the mirror which will be superimposed on the reflection of the face of the user. In this way, the user will obtain a simulated appearance of her lips with selected lipstick colors. However, the colored areas on the movable member are not true representations of what the actual lipstick product will look like when applied to the lips of the user.